Triple Draw Lowball Probability Question

[beset7]

I'm not very good with calculating probabilities, but I was hoping someone might want to take up this problem. I played with it but I got hopelessly lost :$

Triple Draw Lowball
5-handed
No folding
Average discard throughout the three draws of 1.5 cards.

What is the probability that at least one player will draw a wheel (A to 5 straight)?

This came to me after a particularly loose game of TDL where a wheel was shown down 6 hands in a row! I haven't played a lot of TDL but if I do I'm not jamming with my 6-lows anymore. Expensive!

[gaming_mouse]

This would be very difficult, if not impossible, to calculate by hand. You would first of all need to assume some basic strategy being followed by all players. Given that, you could calculate the chance that an individual player ends up with a wheel.

However, the solution for at least one of five players having the wheel cannot be deduced from the chance that a particular player has the wheel, because the chances of each player having the wheel are not independent, and the dependence is not loose.

I think the only way to get an accurate answer would be to program the strategy being followed by each player, and then run a simulation.

Wish I could be of more help,
gm

[beset7]

You know, in my struggles, I started to think that what you said was probably the case and I would need to run a simulation (too bad there is no Wilson Triple Draw Lowball simulator). Thanks for clarifying my suspicions.

[gaming_mouse]

Yeah,

If it's important to you to solve the problem, PM me and I can give some advice on free pokersource libraries. It's not that hard, but not the easy either. I'd say at least a few hours of work, so if you were just curious, not worth the bother. But if you need the info for some other reason, you could do it...

gm